Edward Estlin Cummings(October
14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), popularly known asE. E. Cummings,
with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase
letters ase. e. cummings(in
the style of some of his poems), was an
American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. His body of work
encompasses approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays
and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings. He is
remembered as a preeminent voice of20th
century poetry, as well as one of the most popular.

Early
years

Cummings was born inCambridge,
Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894, elder of two children to Edward
Cummings and Rebecca Haswell Clarke.[1]His
younger sister, Elizabeth, was born in 1901.

He was named after his father but his family called him by his middle name,
Estlin.[2]His
father was a professor ofsociologyand
political scienceatHarvard
Universityand later aUnitarianminister.[3]Cummings
described his father as a person who could accomplish anything that he wanted
to. Edward was well skilled and was always working or repairing things. He and
his son were close, and Edward was one of Estlin's most ardent supporters.

His mother never partook in stereotypically "feminine" things, and enjoyed
reading poetry to her children. Raised in a well-educated family, Cummings was
a precocious boy and his mother encouraged Estlin to write poetry every day.
He wrote his first poem when he was only three: "Oh,the pretty birdie,O;/with
his little toe,toe,toe!"[4]

Education

In his youth, Estlin Cummings attendedCambridge
Latin High Schoolin Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Early stories and poems were published in the school newspaper,
Cambridge Review.

Cummings enrolled atHarvard
Universityin September 1911,
from which he received a
Bachelor of Artsdegree in 1917
and aMaster's
degreefor English and
Classical Studies in 1916. While at Harvard, he befriendedJohn
Dos Passos, at one time rooming in Thayer Hall, named after the family of
one of his Harvard acquaintances,Scofield
Thayer, and not yet a freshman-only dormitory.[6]Several
of Cummings' poems were published in the Harvard Monthlyas
early as his sophomore year. Cummings himself labored on the school newspaper
alongside fellowHarvard
AesthetesDos Passos andS.
Foster Damon. In 1915, his poems were published in theHarvard
Advocate.

In his final year at Harvard, Cummings was influenced by writers such asGertrude
Stein andEzra
Pound. He graduatedmagna
cum laudein 1916,
delivering a controversial commencement address entitled "The New Art". This
speech gave him his first taste of notoriety, as he managed to give the false
impression that the well-likedimagistpoet,
Amy Lowell, whom he himself admired, was "abnormal". For this, Cummings
was chastised in the newspapers. In 1917, Cummings' first published poems
appeared in a collection of poetry entitledEight
Harvard Poets.

Career

In 1917 Cummings enlisted in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with his
college friendJohn
Dos Passos. Due to an administrative mix-up, Cummings was not assigned to
an ambulance unit for five weeks, during which time he stayed inParis.
He fell in love with the city, to which he would return throughout his life.

On September 21, 1917, just five months after his belated assignment, he and a
friend,
William Slater Brown, were arrested on suspicion ofespionage.
The two openly expressed
anti-warviews; Cummings spoke
of his lack of hatred for the Germans.[7]They
were sent to a military detention camp, theDépôt
de Triage, in La Ferté-Macé,Orne,Normandy,
where they languished for 3½ months. Cummings' experiences in the camp were
later related in his novel,The
Enormous Roomabout whichF.
Scott Fitzgeraldopined, "Of
all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives-The
Enormous Roomby e e cummings....Those
few who cause books to live have not been able to endure the thought of its
mortality."[8]

He was released from the detention camp on December 19, 1917, after much
intervention from his politically connected father. Cummings returned to the
United States on New Year's Day 1918. Later in 1918 he was drafted into thearmy.
He served in the12th
DivisionatCamp
Devens, Massachusetts, until November 1918.[9][10]

Cummings returned to Paris in 1921 and remained there for two years before
returning to
New York. During the rest of the 1920s and 1930s he returned to Paris a
number of times, and traveled throughoutEurope,
meeting, among others,Pablo
Picasso. In 1931 Cummings traveled to theSoviet
Unionand recounted his
experiences inEimi,
published two years later. During these years Cummings also traveled toNorthern
AfricaandMexico
and worked as an essayist and portrait artist forVanity
Fairmagazine (1924 to
1927).

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